For the Weird West canon, Gabe and Cimmerian are a part of. Based on the idea of searching for fragments of God across the west with Cimmerian's suggestion that it should be CotBG related given the premise's link to religion.

Many of the scenes have great mechanical imagery, and your depictions of the congregants' body modifications and the scenery within the airship were one of the strengths of this tale to me. However, in a few spots, especially the fight scenes in part 2, I felt as though their interactions would have been more apt for a quasi-mercenary order like the the Brotherhood of Steel from the Fallout series who happened to occasionally burst into song.

The religious themes sometimes feel sort of… superficial? They praise the Broken God with loud hosannas, pepper their dialogue with religious speech, hastily genuflect to a possible relic etc. But speaking as a person with intense and often internally contradictory religious feelings, it took a couple re-reads before I started to empathize with them. Plus, here you've got, it looks like, proto-Maxwellists and Mormons fusing their beliefs. I'm a big fan of syncretism and that's a cool as heck idea. But saying the Mormons were cool with fusing their version of Christianity with the CotBG's vision of who God is and what people should do about that because they… put a similar value on lifestyle choices like forbidding alcohol and sex work? Seems kinda handwavey. Maybe it's just because it's presented from the perspective of the cynical co-conspirators that gave me that impression, idk.

Possibly my favorite example of CotBG religious character development that I've seen on the wiki was the way Sister-Legate Trunnion is written in Variations on a Schema. For Father Maxwell himself I think you did a decent job of capturing a similar feeling. Margarette's flashback to her family dying in the razing of Baltimore is also an effective way of providing insight into where her dedication to the church is rooted. However, I want to see the expression of their faith also extend to their actions. Not just the instruments themselves, but also the processes of design, analysis, fabrication and deployment are imbued with spiritual significance which reinforces their beliefs. They're using Union rifles and Anderson robots instead of things they built in-house, with blessings upon every component and assembly? That was a spiritual decision that probably required the Shepherd to wrestle with his conscience and cost him sleepless nights, and maybe pushback from his followers. Or maybe this denomination, due to its blending of two faiths, officially has a much more permissive stance on the integration of technologies / faith practices which have NOT been pre-approved by religious authorities. If the latter, that's quite radical and I want to know more!

I get that Ernest and Charles are using the Church and working against them for personal profit. They apparently worship Fortuna? And they planned to get the Maxwellist Mormons all killed by siccing the hungry flesh-buildings on them, so they could nab the relic and … some other stuff … for themselves and get filthy rich off it somehow. (1. Get rid of Church. 2. Steal relic. 3. ??? 4. Profit.) How did they know the hungry buildings were there? Did they help put them there? What's their plan for dealing with the buildings after the Church are all dead? If they planned to hang back and let the buildings do the dirty work, whyheck did they go down to the town with them when they knew it was gonna be a slaughter? Did their plan go wrong somehow?

Is Father Maxwell James Clerk Maxwell, or did the priest name himself after the original Maxwell? Part of the reason I ask is that in regular-Foundation-universe chronology, the schism between Cogwork Orthodox and Maxwellists didn't happen until the 20th century. And began to resolve peacefully, sometime early in the 21st century if I read it right, thanks to Robert Bumaro in The Heresy of Disassembly. Bumaro apparently already exists in this story's timeline, instead of being born in the early 20th century, and this Church still honors him even though they very recently broke faith with the Cogwork Orthodoxy. I kinda want at least a lampshade on how that all hangs together, just to be able to mentally recalibrate from my existing picture of CotBG canon.

Smaller nitpick: When there is a big, powerful Thing being presented in the narrative, whether it's a Maxwellist airship or an angry flesh-house, I felt like the description of their shapes and movements were a little rushed. As if the camera had sort of panned past them without letting my eyes rest to pick out much detail.

This ended up a good bit longer than I anticipated, so I'm gonna hold off for now on quibbling with specific minor word choices. This was an enjoyable and interesting caper that got my mental gears spinning. With some of the above questions answered through revision, I think I would have enjoyed and understood it more. Hopefully that was helpful; good luck and see you around the site!